Files
zed/crates/gpui
2a15bf630d Require multibuffer excerpts to be ordered and nonoverlapping (#52364)
TODO:
- [x] merge main
- [x] nonshrinking `set_excerpts_for_path`
- [x] Test-drive potential problem areas in the app
- [x] prepare cloud side
- [x] test collaboration
- [ ] docstrings
- [ ] ???

## Context

### Background

Currently, a multibuffer consists of an arbitrary list of
anchor-delimited excerpts from individual buffers. Excerpt ranges for a
fixed buffer are permitted to overlap, and can appear in any order in
the multibuffer, possibly separated by excerpts from other buffers.
However, in practice all code that constructs multibuffers does so using
the APIs defined in the `path_key` submodule of the `multi_buffer` crate
(`set_excerpts_for_path` etc.) If you only use these APIs, the resulting
multibuffer will maintain the following invariants:

- All excerpts for the same buffer appear contiguously in the
multibuffer
- Excerpts for the same buffer cannot overlap
- Excerpts for the same buffer appear in order
- The placement of the excerpts for a specific buffer in the multibuffer
are determined by the `PathKey` passed to `set_excerpts_for_path`. There
is exactly one `PathKey` per buffer in the multibuffer

### Purpose of this PR

This PR changes the multibuffer so that the invariants maintained by the
`path_key` APIs *always* hold. It's no longer possible to construct a
multibuffer with overlapping excerpts, etc. The APIs that permitted
this, like `insert_excerpts_with_ids_after`, have been removed in favor
of the `path_key` suite.

The main upshot of this is that given a `text::Anchor` and a
multibuffer, it's possible to efficiently figure out the unique excerpt
that includes that anchor, if any:

```
impl MultiBufferSnapshot {
    fn buffer_anchor_to_anchor(&self, anchor: text::Anchor) -> Option<multi_buffer::Anchor>;
}
```

And in the other direction, given a `multi_buffer::Anchor`, we can look
at its `text::Anchor` to locate the excerpt that contains it. That means
we don't need an `ExcerptId` to create or resolve
`multi_buffer::Anchor`, and in fact we can delete `ExcerptId` entirely,
so that excerpts no longer have any identity outside their
`Range<text::Anchor>`.

There are a large number of changes to `editor` and other downstream
crates as a result of removing `ExcerptId` and multibuffer APIs that
assumed it.

### Other changes

There are some other improvements that are not immediate consequences of
that big change, but helped make it smoother. Notably:

- The `buffer_id` field of `text::Anchor` is no longer optional.
`text::Anchor::{MIN, MAX}` have been removed in favor of
`min_for_buffer`, etc.
- `multi_buffer::Anchor` is now a three-variant enum (inlined slightly):

```
enum Anchor {
    Min,
    Excerpt {
        text_anchor: text::Anchor,
        path_key_index: PathKeyIndex,
        diff_base_anchor: Option<text::Anchor>,
    },
    Max,
}
```

That means it's no longer possible to unconditionally access the
`text_anchor` field, which is good because most of the places that were
doing that were buggy for min/max! Instead, we have a new API that
correctly resolves min/max to the start of the first excerpt or the end
of the last excerpt:


```
impl MultiBufferSnapshot {
    fn anchor_to_buffer_anchor(&self, anchor: multi_buffer::Anchor) -> Option<text::Anchor>;
}
```
- `MultiBufferExcerpt` has been removed in favor of a new
`map_excerpt_ranges` API directly on `MultiBufferSnapshot`.

## Self-Review Checklist

<!-- Check before requesting review: -->
- [x] I've reviewed my own diff for quality, security, and reliability
- [x] Unsafe blocks (if any) have justifying comments
- [x] The content is consistent with the [UI/UX
checklist](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#uiux-checklist)
- [x] Tests cover the new/changed behavior
- [x] Performance impact has been considered and is acceptable

Release Notes:

- N/A

---------

Co-authored-by: Conrad Irwin <conrad.irwin@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Piotr Osiewicz <24362066+osiewicz@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Jakub Konka <kubkon@jakubkonka.com>
Co-authored-by: Conrad <conrad@zed.dev>
2026-04-01 17:25:32 +00:00
..
2026-02-26 18:36:50 +01:00

Welcome to GPUI!

GPUI is a hybrid immediate and retained mode, GPU accelerated, UI framework for Rust, designed to support a wide variety of applications.

Getting Started

GPUI is still in active development as we work on the Zed code editor, and is still pre-1.0. There will often be breaking changes between versions. You'll also need to use the latest version of stable Rust and be on macOS or Linux. Add the following to your Cargo.toml:

gpui = { version = "*" }

Everything in GPUI starts with an Application. You can create one with Application::new(), and kick off your application by passing a callback to Application::run(). Inside this callback, you can create a new window with App::open_window(), and register your first root view. See gpui.rs for a complete example.

Dependencies

GPUI has various system dependencies that it needs in order to work.

macOS

On macOS, GPUI uses Metal for rendering. In order to use Metal, you need to do the following:

  • Install Xcode from the macOS App Store, or from the Apple Developer website. Note this requires a developer account.

Ensure you launch Xcode after installing, and install the macOS components, which is the default option.

  • Install Xcode command line tools

    xcode-select --install
    
  • Ensure that the Xcode command line tools are using your newly installed copy of Xcode:

    sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
    

The Big Picture

GPUI offers three different registers depending on your needs:

  • State management and communication with Entity's. Whenever you need to store application state that communicates between different parts of your application, you'll want to use GPUI's entities. Entities are owned by GPUI and are only accessible through an owned smart pointer similar to an Rc. See the app::context module for more information.

  • High level, declarative UI with views. All UI in GPUI starts with a view. A view is simply an Entity that can be rendered, by implementing the Render trait. At the start of each frame, GPUI will call this render method on the root view of a given window. Views build a tree of elements, lay them out and style them with a tailwind-style API, and then give them to GPUI to turn into pixels. See the div element for an all purpose swiss-army knife of rendering.

  • Low level, imperative UI with Elements. Elements are the building blocks of UI in GPUI, and they provide a nice wrapper around an imperative API that provides as much flexibility and control as you need. Elements have total control over how they and their child elements are rendered and can be used for making efficient views into large lists, implement custom layouting for a code editor, and anything else you can think of. See the element module for more information.

Each of these registers has one or more corresponding contexts that can be accessed from all GPUI services. This context is your main interface to GPUI, and is used extensively throughout the framework.

Other Resources

In addition to the systems above, GPUI provides a range of smaller services that are useful for building complex applications:

  • Actions are user-defined structs that are used for converting keystrokes into logical operations in your UI. Use this for implementing keyboard shortcuts, such as cmd-q. See the action module for more information.

  • Platform services, such as quit the app or open a URL are available as methods on the app::App.

  • An async executor that is integrated with the platform's event loop. See the executor module for more information.,

  • The [gpui::test] macro provides a convenient way to write tests for your GPUI applications. Tests also have their own kind of context, a TestAppContext which provides ways of simulating common platform input. See app::test_context and test modules for more details.

Currently, the best way to learn about these APIs is to read the Zed source code or drop a question in the Zed Discord. We're working on improving the documentation, creating more examples, and will be publishing more guides to GPUI on our blog.